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Curious Cat Science and Egineering blog full tag cloud
Pupils conquer fear of computers
“I’m feeling much better. The E-library has helped with my studies. “We can see the periodic table of science, and also maps and other geography things in a pictorial way that is easy to understand. It’s not only that - we can also play games and have fun.”
Kamal says his parents were very excited when he told them about the computer and came to watch the very next day. It was not only Kamal. His computer teacher, Shankar Prajapati, says all the pupils were afraid. “They all worried they would catch some virus and fall ill or even die. But now they are familiar with computers,” he says.
“Even we teachers are gaining knowledge from the E-library. It’s really helpful for us, too. “The students can see science experiments carried out on screen and search for whatever they want in the encyclopaedia.
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This is a free and open-source (accessible to everyone) package which connects one powerful central server in the school, using the Linux operating system, to a number of diskless low-end computers. When linked to the server, each computer receives a full Linux desktop.
Read more about the Help Nepal Network’s eLibrary program. Photos from this web site shows students in Nepal using computers.
I believe strongly in the ability of kids to learn if they are just provided some tools that help them do so. See a great post on Hole in the Wall computers.
Related: A Child’s View of the OLPC Laptop - Fixing the World on $2 a Day - Open Source: The Scientific Model Applied to Programming - What Business Can Learn from Open Source
The National Academies state that they want to develop websites, podcasts, and printed information featuring the topics in science, engineering, and medicine that concern you the most, and that you’d like to understand better. Great. I am very disappointed in how little great material is available now (from them, and others).
Fill out their survey and hope they hire some people that actually understand the web. I must say the survey seems very lame to me.
The internet provides a fantastic platform for those that have an interest in increasing scientific literacy. But there is still very little great material available. There are a few great resources but there should be a great deal more. The National Academies of Science have a particularly stilted web presence - it is as though the web were just a way to distribute pages for people to print out. Though they are very slowly getting a bit better, adding a small amount of podcasts, for example. While hardly innovative, for them, it is a step into the 21st century, at least.
Some of the good material online: Public Library of Science - Science Blogs - Encyclopedia of Life - The Naked Scientists - Berkeley Course Webcasts - BBC Science News - MIT OpenCourseWare (though it is very lacking in some ways at least they are trying) - TED - Mayo Clinic - Nobel Prize - SciVee
It seems to me universities with huge endowments (MIT, Harvard, Yale, Standford…), government agencies (NSF, National Academies), museums and professional societies should be doing much more to create great online content. I would increase funding in this area by 5 to 10 times what is currently being dedicated right now, and probably much more would be wise. I believe funding this would be most effective way to spend resources of those organizations on what they say they want to support.
Once again a severed underwater cable has disrupted web access
A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily. Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.
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It is thought that 65% of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan have also been severely affected.
Earlier this year, the same line was damaged in the same area - off the Egyptian coast - although only two lines were snapped then. “We’ve lost three out of four lines. If the fourth cable breaks, we’re looking at a total blackout in the Middle East,” said Mr Wright.
“These three circuits account for 90% of the traffic and we’re going to see more international phone calls dropping and a huge degradation in the quality of local internet,” he added.
“Normally you would expect to see one major break per cable per year. With four you should have an insurance policy. For this to happen twice in one year, on the same cable, is a serious cause for concern.”
Related: How Do You Fix an Undersea Cable? - Internet Undersea Cables - Internet Underwater Fiber
Nice post from Rich Hoeg - Lake Superior vs. Silicon Valley Hot Spots:
This is one small example of why Silicon Valley is so successful. To be economically successful, countries need to focus on big things (investing in infrastructure, sensible laws relating to innovation, creating and maintaining good capital markets, investing in science and engineering education, encouraging entrepreneurs, transportation systems…) and the small stuff like this. Silicon Valley continue to be a bright light (as do other places, like Boston) but overall the USA seems to be trailing, not leading, far too often lately.
Related: Engineering the Future Economy - USA Science Losing Ground - Diplomacy and Science Research - USA Broadband is Slow. Really Slow.
Surprise, surprise: U.S. broadband is slow. Really slow.
Japan dominates international broadband speed with a median download speed of approximately 63 Mb/s, more than enough to stream DVD-quality video with surround audio in real time. Next on the list is South Korea where download speeds achieve an average of 49.50 Mb/s. Finland and France follow with 21.70 Mb/s and 17.60 Mb/s, respectively. Canada ranked eighth with an average download speed of 7.60 Mb/s. The U.S. came in 15th with 2.35 Mb/s.
I see this as an economic issue. Countries that have provided an investment in internet infrastructure to provide broadband to the home at reasonable prices will be rewarded.
Related: Speed Matter Report (pdf) - PhD Student Speeds up Broadband by 200 times - Plugging America’s Broadband Gap - The Next Generation Internet - YouTube Access Denied - internet related posts
Plugging America’s Broadband Gap
This is one of a number of facts that those in the USA seem ignorant of: we have a far worse internet and cell phone infrastructure than many countries. Those that think the USA is the leading technology country should be alarmed by such poor performance in a critical area such as internet infrastructure.
The free service wouldn’t be the fastest on the market. The winning bidder would have to offer a minimum speed of 768 kilobits per second to 95% of the country within 10 years. Although that’s technically broadband, it’s about half the speed of today’s average U.S. broadband link.
Still, Martin’s proposal has drawn support because it has the potential to crack what has become a broadband duopoly. In most markets, only one telecom company and one cable provider offer the service. A third alternative with decent speed and big savings off the current $50 monthly average price could spark more competition. The leading contender to win the auction is M2Z Networks, a startup founded by former FCC staffer John Muleta.
The FCC approach is no panacea. It’ll provide competition at the low end of the market and will do nothing to bring the U.S. the blazing speeds common in Korea and Japan.
Related: China Builds a Better Internet - Internet Undersea Cables - Understanding Computers and the Internet
The Webometrics Ranking of University Web Sites provides some interesting data. I don’t remember reading this last year, but they state on the site now: “The original aim of the Ranking was to promote Web publication, not to rank institutions. Supporting Open Access initiatives, electronic access to scientific publications and to other academic material are our primary targets.” I support those goals, I am not totally convinced this is the most effective measure to do that but it provides one way of ranking web presence of universities. I am not that convinced this does a good job of ranking the web presences of universities but I think it is of some interest so I decided to post on the results.
Related: 2007 Webometrics University Ranking - Best Research University Rankings (2007) - Country H-index Rank for Science Publications - Understanding the Evolution of Human Beings by Country
| Country | % top 200 | % top 500 | % World Population | Jiao Tong top 101 |
| USA | 53 | 37.8 | 4.6 | 54 |
| Germany | 7.5 | 9.4 | 1.3 | 6 |
| United Kingdom | 5.5 | 7.2 | 0.9 | 11 |
| Canada | 8.5 | 5 | 0.5 | 4 |
| Australia | 3 | 2.8 | 0.3 | 2 |
| Italy | 0.5 | 2.8 | 0.9 | 1 |
| Japan | 1.5 | 2.4 | 2 | 6 |
| France | 0.5 | 2.4 | 0.9 | 4 |
| Netherlands | 4 | 2.2 | 0.3 | 2 |
| Sweden | 3 | 2 | 0.1 | 4 |
| Switzerland | 2 | 1.6 | 0.1 | 3 |
| Taiwan | 0.5 | 1.6 | 0.4 | 0 |
| Finland | 0.5 | 1.4 | 0.1 | 1 |
| China | 0.5 | 1.2 | 20.1 | 0 |
| Portugal | 0 | 1.2 | 0.2 | 0 |
So intense is the competition among tech companies to lower their costs of processing data that some treat information about their energy use like state secrets.
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The $4.5 billion spent in the U.S. in 2006 is the equivalent of the electric bills for 5.8 million U.S. households.
When you realize the huge cooling needs (in addition to the need for electricity to run the computers) you can see the huge advantage of a cold climate where you can take advantage of cool air for cooling.
Related: Geothermal Power in Alaska - Cost of Powering Your PC - Google Investing Huge Sums in Renewable Energy - High-efficiency computer power supplies
The NASA Science Mission Directorate sponsors scientific research, and develops and deploys satellites and probes in collaboration with NASA’s partners around the world to answer fundamental questions requiring the view from and into space. SMD seeks to understand the origins, evolution, and destiny of the universe and to understand the nature of the phenomena that shape it. SMD also seeks to understand:
* the nature of life in the universe and what kinds of life may exist beyond Earth;
* the solar system, both scientifically and in preparation for human exploration; and
* the Sun and Earth, changes in the Earth-Sun system, and the consequences of the Earth-Sun relationship for life on Earth.
Maybe, for this site NASA actually listened to the engineers: as this site works rather than making false claims about the visitor’s browser. The site includes content specifically targeted at teachers, students, researchers and the general public.
Related: Great Self Portrait - Boiling Water in Space - Mars Rovers Getting Ready for Another Adventure
Millions of users around the globe could not access YouTube for a couple hours yesterday. Why?
Well to understand, we need to start with how you normally connect to a web site. You click on a link to youtube.com. Your ISP looks up the internet address for youtube.com by looking at internet routing tables. Each domain has a name server that provides the IP address for where it should be found (for example, an IP address that shows youtube.com is 208.65.153.238).
Well what happened in this case is Pakistan decided to prevent anyone in Pakistan from accessing YouTube because the government didn’t like some video. The way Pakistan decided to accomplish this was to update their routing table to just direct all traffic that was meant to go to YouTube to a phony address which would then return nothing.
Why did many outside of Pakistan lose access to YouTube? Well their version of the routing table leaked out of Pakistan through PCCW (large internet provider), Then other internet providers adopted the incorrect information, until many around the globe were being directed to the wrong place.
You might find it amazing the routing system could allow such a thing to happen - it doesn’t seem very secure. You are right, that it doesn’t seem very sensible. When the internet was created some protocols were established that made sense then but don’t necessarily make sense for what the internet has become.
The problem was fixed when Google’s YouTube engineers contacted PCCW to inform them of the problem and have them correct it. I think if it was my site instead, I would have had difficulty figure out what was going on 
Once PCCW corrected their routing tables the fixed flowed through the system and everyone was able to see the great stuff like Marissa Mayer discussing Innovation at Google.
I would imagine Internet2 (well on its way to a computer near you) and IPv6 will take not be so venerable to such a mistake.
Related: Insecure routing redirects YouTube to Pakistan - YouTube outage blamed on Pakistan - YouTube Censorship Sheds Light on Internet Trust - The Web is 15 Years Old - Internet Undersea Cables - Harvard Course: Understanding Computers and the Internet - Net Neutrality - The Next Generation Internet - The Journey of Internet Packets - mistake proofing (the opposite of the current setup)
In a previously post we highlighted some of the engineering involved in fixing undersea cables and the challenges in laying internet fiber underwater. Given the recent news those posts might be of interest: Cut undersea Internet cables slow India’s connectivity
For some businesses, the cut meant a slightly degraded service – poorer reception for call-centers that use Internet telephony, for example. But for larger businesses that carry the bulk of outsourcing from the United States and Europe, there was virtually no disruption.
“We have diversity in path and providers globally, and hence we have not lost any connectivity to our offices or customers,” according to an e-mailed statement by Infosys, one of India’s largest Information Technology companies.
While the initial reports talk of the cables being damaged by a ship anchor, at least one new report disputes that, Ships did not cut internet cable:
Related: The Web is 15 Years Old - Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog posts on India - India travelogues
Harvard Extension School - Computer Science E-1: Understanding Computers and the Internet
Nice job. via: Learn How The Darn Thing Works … from Harvard
Related: University of California, Berkeley course videos - Technology Talks at Google - Engineering and Science Webcast Libraries - Lectures from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
So, in 1991, the web protocol was added to the internet which was created by the United States ARPA and DARPA starting in 1968, or so depending on what is counted as the start.
Additional articles exploring the history of the internet and the world wide web:
China Builds a Better Internet (site broke the link so I removed it)
China is looking to become a scientific leader, with projects like China’s Next Generation Internet, to strengthen their economy by creating
IPv6 is coming, in fact it is already here, though in a limited way. The work started in 1994 when the IPv6 working group was established and proposed standard adopted by the Internet Engineering Steering Group.
IEEE-USA chief calls for IPv6 adoption:
50 Top Science Blogs (”by working scientist as far as they can tell”) based on technorati rank from Nature. Including:
Missing science blogs include:
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